Center for Investigative Reporting

July 22nd, 2011

Northern California fishing town struggling to stay afloat in wake of tsunami

It’s been four months since tsunami waves generated by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan ravaged the harbor in Northern California’s Crescent City, destroying pilings and sinking 16 boats after ripping them from their docks.

But the diminutive harbor is still a long way from functional, crippling to a local economy dependent on the fishing industry. Tsunami victims, meanwhile, are finding little help in disaster relief, much of it in the form of reimbursements and loans they can’t afford.

Excluding the inmates who reside in Pelican Bay State Prison, Crescent City is home to about 4,200 people. The town already took a significant hit when most of the lumber mills and fish processing facilities were shuttered in the last decade, forcing hundreds to leave in search of jobs. Once home to eight lumber mills and three fish processing plants, Crescent City is down to just one of each. Read more.

Photo, via NOAA’s National Ocean Service on Flickr, shows the aftermath of the March 11 tsunami in the inner boat basin in Crescent City.

Reblogged from California Watch

July 15th, 2011

In the wake of the devastating tsunami damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, seismologists in the United States are focusing on a potentially dangerous fault system near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California.

Perched over Point Buchon on the Central Coast, the PG&E plant was built four decades ago near two active faults: the Hosgri and the Shoreline. The electricity-generating facility on a barren stretch of coastline is about 12 miles from the college town of San Luis Obispo.

While PG&E maintains the Hosgri and Shoreline are too small to threaten the aging plant, some government scientists suspect the faults – acting with others in the region – could produce an earthquake much more powerful than the plant was built to withstand.

Watch our segment, produced with PBS Need to Know and Capitol Public Radio, to learn more.

July 5th, 2011

californiawatch:

As KQED reported today, a computer animation made by the International Pacific Research Center predicts that debris from the Japan tsunami will connect with the California coastline in late 2013, early 2014.

Reblogged from California Watch

May 19th, 2011

From Gizmodo: Photos of the tsunami hitting the Fukushima nuclear power plan.

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